


Skin Deep

by thehobblefootalchemist



Series: All The Devils Are Singing [1]
Category: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Especially when he has every reason to believe that those feelings will be unrequited, Heavy on introspection and reflection because tbh I can't write any other way, I can promise that this is, I never expected to ship Victor Zsasz with anybody and then Birds of Prey shot my kneecaps out, If Birds of Prey also shot your kneecaps out I hope you enjoy this hat I am tossing into the ring, Local Serial Killer Does Not Know How To Process Feelings, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, but boy does it take a while to get there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:07:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23525086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehobblefootalchemist/pseuds/thehobblefootalchemist
Summary: He knew that society would label him 'broken' in a myriad of different ways if he ever let any shrinks close enough, so he supposed that in the end it was only natural that he'd be broken romantically, too--no Mark to be found, and head over heels for somebody anyway.What a fucking joke.
Relationships: Roman Sionis/Victor Zsasz
Series: All The Devils Are Singing [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1714546
Comments: 20
Kudos: 225





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've watched this movie so many times you guys. So many.

Victor Zsasz had come into the world completely bare.

All children did, in a way, but after his washing and swaddling there proved to be a noticeable absence; a deviation that set him apart from all the other children on the ward, and indeed most others in the world. It was commonplace for new parents to check their newborn over, looking for the unique placement and shape of the symbol that foretold their future soulmate, but though Victor's searched and searched they could find no Mark upon their son.

They did _try_ not to let it color the way they raised him, Victor gave them that. It came up, of course--for better or worse society was rather built around the fact that a good ninety-five percent of people had it inked on them from their first breath that they would find their (supposedly) perfect romantic or platonic partners one day--but only really the once, when he'd been sat down before attending kindergarten. Told, in bolstering tones, to try and not feel left out when the other kids started inevitably comparing the patterns or shapes on their skin.

He'd found out when he was seven that their sympathy extended only as far as his earshot. He'd been crossing a hall when he heard his father speak from the next room over. "Not even a goddamn blue one" became a phrase that Victor never forgot. The drunkenly grumbled tone stayed with him always, as did what it taught him: that a whole lot of rot could hide behind a false smile, and that people were already judging him for the apparent certainty that he wasn't even destined for a best friend.

The implication that blues were worth less than reds had grated on him too. His lack of Mark did seem to be accurate in that he both was not good _at_ and had little interest _in_ making personal connections, but especially as he grew older he rather thought his dispassion gave him a clarity of perspective on the whole thing that most other people didn't have.

Having a Mark, or a plurality of them, just meant that you were a person who thrived on being with or around other people. Victor categorically wasn't one of those, ergo no Mark. It all checked out, cut and dry...quite literally, in his case. By the time his parents had been taken out as collateral damage in a mob hit, leaving Victor inheritor of their modestly wealthy estate, he had identified a growing urge that became his modus operandi--fulfillment not through a person, but a principle.

He'd found the benefit of being a blank canvas, and that was that he got to decorate himself.

-

Victor didn't so much turn to a life of crime as decide to finally indulge it after a decade of it pawing at his ankles. It was simple: if he was hungry, he fed himself; his compulsions hungered, so he fed those too. Mob work turned out to be the most efficient way of managing both at the same time--gambling had, for a while, been near as addictive as murder, and most of his father's legacy was now lining other men's pockets. Serial killing in effect became his career. Which was fine by him, because after all, a society that seemed to be of the opinion that you should 'do what you love' couldn't blame him in the slightest for having found his niche.

Not that he generally gave a shit about the opinions of the general populace. For a long time the only instances someone's regard mattered to him were when they were considering hiring him for a job, and even then he cared for the job's sake and the job's sake only. His macabre resume either impressed people enough to want to hire him or skeeved them out so deeply that they marked him down in the column of 'do not fuck with'. Either reaction suited him fine--one meant that he was eating and the other was one less moron under the delusion that they could take him in a fight, which even with his limited forward-planning skills he recognized could only be a good thing in the long run.

And he _was_ in it for the long run. Gotham could be a dog eat dog shithole even--and especially--in the districts where the upper crust liked to pretend their power games weren't just as violent and insidious as the gang wars. In spite of living as little more than a sharp-edged shadow in its dankest alleys Victor had managed to survive. He may not have had a Mark but no one could deny the ones he'd put on his skin by his own hand, or the name he'd carved for himself within the city as a by-product of doing so.

This was so much the case that he eventually caught the eye of a particular, nascent crime lord. Victor was intrigued when word on the underground informed him that Roman Sionis wanted an interview. The man was on the rise amongst the underbelly of Gotham, but with a bunch of mostly-public baggage that gave Victor some preconceived notions. Still, it was a possible paycheck, so he sent the messenger back with a fear of god and an affirmation that he would show at the rendezvous.

It was an encounter that would change his life.

-

"Ah, the famous Mr. Zsasz." Enthused and appraising simultaneously, teeth and blue eyes both catching the light and glinting with it. "I see you're as scarred-up as all the stories say."

"You could call it my work history." That was the phrase he'd learned to use with potential contractors. It was terms most of them understood, kept the subject short.

"And what a history it is."

Sionis circled him; Victor could feel the weight of his gaze giving him an up-and-down. When he'd come back around to his front and the blue met his brown again there was a flicker of fascination in it just the same as there had been in his voice. And something else, too--a kind of avid shine Victor had not expected to see.

"I'm in the market for a man with your brand of...mm. Artistic flair. These other motherfuckers--" he spread his arms wide, indicating the goons that had come to the meet as bodyguards "--just can't...they just can't get it _right_. I have a calling card and nobody seems to have the spine or the vision to realize it for me properly."

Every single one of Victor's assumptions about this man had by this point gone out the window. It was only his natural inclination for expressionlessness that kept his own burgeoning captivation from showing in his face. "What's the job?"

"All I want," Sionis told him in clipped tones, with another glare around the room, "is someone who won't cringe when I give the order to have someone's face peeled off. And who won't rip the fucking thing when they're getting it off the skull."

The hair on the back of his neck was all on end. His hands twitched infinitesimally where he held them behind his back. His eyes strayed from the crime lord's face to look at his nearest bodyguard, and slowly back again. "May I demonstrate?"

Roman Sionis had a reputation for rashness and rage that was well-earned, but that did not mean he was not quick-witted. He did not even have to follow Victor's gaze to catch his drift, and the bright and wild grin he gave in answer sent a thrum of electricity down Victor's spine that never went away.

-

Though some of his more bastardous clients had thought otherwise due to his occasional slurring of words in his speech, Victor was not an unintelligent man. Nor was he uneducated. The more work that Roman gave him--because one never _took_ from Roman Sionis, Roman Sionis always _gave_ \--the more that Victor became quietly certain that there was a perfect term for what he was experiencing beginning to occur between himself and his newest, most enthusiastic client.

_Kindred spirit._

It perplexed him. Victor had never had such a thing before; had never expected to find it. He was woefully unprepared to feel any sort of _bond_ with another individual, let alone deal with the swamping compulsion to cultivate that relationship. It was an almost frightening realization when he noticed that the desire to be called on by him had become almost as strong as his need to scar himself after a kill.

Much more than spooked, however, Victor had to admit to finding himself... _stirred_. Roman (he thinks it was after the fifth, maybe fourth time he'd killed for the man that he stopped being just Sionis) showed an interest and involvement in Victor's work that no one else ordering a hit ever had before. Sometimes other clients had spectated, but they'd never _participated_ the way Roman did--present for almost every kill and standing close, a dark sparkle in his eyes, the gloved hands even occasionally providing a round of applause.

Roman didn't just pay him for his ferocity. He encouraged it. He _praised_ it.

It made something warm curl in his chest.

Particularly affecting was what he'd seen of Roman's own capacity for violence. Just behind that foppishness lay something cruel and feral, something the like of which Victor had never seen before in any Gotham mob boss. They'd all been quite happy to kill whomever they wanted, of course, but from instructions alone, and given most often from armchairs with cigars in their mouths. Roman was different--Roman was just as ready to unleash _himself_ upon someone as give the order for someone like Victor to be let off theirs.

What delighted him the most was that 'someone _like_ ' Victor seemed quickly to be becoming _just_ Victor, for Roman. It was after the dozenth time he'd killed for him that he registered that he'd stopped receiving contracts from other people. Which, in a town like Gotham, meant that Victor just might have had a claim staked on him--a concept that before might have rubbed him the wrong way, but if it was _Roman_...

Up until that point Victor had thought he'd found killing in itself fulfilling enough. Now he could see how wrong he had been, how retrospection revealed what a bland existence he'd been living, in as much of a rut as any other day-to-day grind of a job. He supposed he hadn't missed anything at the time because it was near impossible to miss something that you'd never had but god, did his work now have _color_. No longer did he just have his principle. He had a purpose.

Metaphor was not a strong suit of his, but there was one that occurred to him and stuck: he'd been in a desert, and now that he'd gotten a taste of the wellspring that was Roman Sionis he didn't ever want to let it go.

Luckily for Victor the growing dependence appeared to be mutual. More and more he was summoned to Roman's side not just for assassinations, but for so-called business meetings--to stand at Roman's shoulder and simply smile when introduced as his associate, the gesture less a grin than a baring of teeth meant to terrify any subordinates or would-be competitors. Roman even made use of him in his public dealings, calling on him almost every evening to trail behind him while he made his rounds in the nightclub he owned.

One particular night, Victor was invited upstairs.

(He was well aware 'invited' was a strong word considering that with Roman an offer might as well have been an order, but Roman having taken the trouble to frame it welcomingly still felt nice.)

It was just after closing, all the club staff having gone and only a few of Roman's low-level goons hanging about. Roman ordered those away snappishly, declaring any business that they had could wait on his pleasure tomorrow, and they scattered like the mice they were. Victor had been here before, in Roman's apartment, but never had it just been him and its owner alone. His eyes tracked the man as he sauntered over to his mini-bar and set two glasses on the counter, unsure what to expect.

Roman looked around when he registered that Victor had come to a stop not by him, but back near the couch. "Well come on, Zsasz, get your ass over here. I'm not drinking alone."

"Sorry, boss." Victor closed the distance between them, having to take his hands out from behind his back when Roman held out a drink to him. It was getting harder to rein in his confusion--he couldn't recall anything having happened recently that would warrant this. "Can I ask what the occasion is?"

"You," Roman told him, clinking his glass to Victor's and throwing the whole thing down his throat in one go, "are getting promoted. Fuck, do you know how long I've been looking for someone to fill this spot?"

It was clearly a rhetorical question but he was compelled to answer anyway. "A long time?"

"A long, _long_ time," Roman repeated, scowling, but the recalled frustration melted into all smiles. He set his glass down, a hand reaching up and coming to rest on Victor's shoulder. "But that's over now. You're going to have those digs over there all to yourself, and everything's going to be super."

The man's chin had tilted towards a room adjacent to the one in which they were standing. Between the electric current running through him at the touch and his startlement at the implication, Victor blinked. "That's--mine?"

"Yep. I had the thing cleared out and it's all converted to a second bedroom now. You're going to be full-time, live-in, all your shit moved over by the end of tomorrow. My right hand man." He grasped Victor's chin between a leather-clad thumb and forefinger, eyes glowing in the dim light of the room as he coaxed their gazes to meet and hold. "'Kay?"

The warm thing in Victor's chest fluttered. His voice little more than a rasp, he replied, "Yes boss."

Later, when Victor was lying atop his new sheets on his new bed, staring up at his new bedroom's ceiling, he had a twofold realization: he had earned someone's trust...and that trust actually meant something to him.

He stayed awake a long time after that.

-

To peel faces became Victor's favorite method of murder.

Roman didn't always order him to do it--sometimes all someone needed was to be set free, and Victor could provide that with any good old-fashioned throat slit--but whenever he did get to bare a skull it was always special. To be told to peel a face meant that the strung-up sack of shit had made a personal transgression against his boss, and nothing in the world felt better than to take away the mask of someone that had hurt Roman. People didn't get to do that and fucking live.

It was cathartic for Victor, too. He harbored a deep-seated resentment ( _"Not even--"_ ) for people who only spoke what they meant when they thought no one else was listening ( _"--a goddamn blue one"_ ), and he'd never found a tranquility quite like watching someone find out how little their silver tongue was worth after he had it bound behind silver tape.

People tried to poach his services, sometimes. Got angry when they were summarily refused, called him a hypocrite for prizing sincerity when the man he worked for was so famously mercurial. They all became additions to Victor's now-expansive set of scars. Not only for their audacity in trying to get in on something that was Roman's, but for the affront of their sheer stupidity in making such a shallow assessment of his employer, for getting the whole situation so completely, so profoundly _wrong_.

Since becoming his right hand he was seeing more of his boss now than ever before, and Roman was the exact opposite of all the false faces it brought Victor so much joy to expose and slice away. He had his mood swings, sure. But what no one else seemed to understand was that while his emotions could change on the turn of a dime, they were _honest_. From his highs to his lows--from letting out wordless shouts of zeal when happy to the set of his jaw when angered; from the way he would sometimes dance to a tune only he could hear to the way he would abruptly shut down, leaving Victor to scatter anyone else who might have been nearby and then simply stand with him, his hands on the man's shoulders as a grounding presence to help him come back from wherever he'd wandered--Roman Sionis showed everything he felt and felt everything he showed. Truly and deeply.

And Victor would sooner carve off his own face than betray a reassurance like that.

-

His epiphany arrived, as earth-shattering comprehension often does, in the most mundane of moments.

It was the early hours of the morning. The club lay dormant below, Roman lay snoozing on the couch, and bare-chested in front of the loft's floor length mirror Victor was choosing where to lay into himself with his favorite knife. Usually he just put his latest line wherever felt best at the time, but more and more lately he'd been feeling an itch to sketch out a particular pattern--abstract, still, but a kind of progressive set to be added to one by one. He couldn't explain the change, didn't really try; he just indulged it.

Right here, maybe? Victor lightly dragged the disinfected blade across his collarbone. ...No, no, that patch didn't seem to be answering the call just yet.

He'd just shifted the knifepoint to another part of his chest when he heard a sound behind him. His eyes flicked up, refocusing over his own shoulder in the reflection to see that Roman had shuffled his position on the cushions. He'd been stretched out before but was now curled in on himself, almost fetal, his mouth still open from the garbled sigh that had caught Victor's attention.

Victor's snort was one of soft amusement. For a man who vocally complained about snoring as a concept, he sure made an endearing picture when he was the one doing it himself.

He wondered if Roman would like it if he went and got one of his throw blankets to drape over him. This was quickly followed up with questioning where the fuck such a thought had even come from. He hadn't considered himself the type to go in for that sort of domestic...shit...

_...shit._

His entire body locked up without his directive and his resulting hiss of pain was loud enough to wake Roman, who flailed briefly on the sofa. Once his surroundings came back to him he peered up at Victor in drowsy accusation.

"Christ, Zsasz, what's the matter with you?"

Victor gingerly pulled his knife away from his chest, where the way his hand had seized had sent the blade biting into his flesh before he could stop it. In a contrite mumble he said, "Cut too deep."

It wasn't a lie.

Roman, meanwhile, was rubbing at an eye with the heel of his hand. "Yeah, well, you're bleeding all over yourself. I needn't mention the consequences of any of that getting on my floor."

Red was indeed sheeting down his chest. If his reply of "On it, boss," came out in a voice that was much smaller than was his norm Roman didn't seem to notice, leaving his lieutenant to it and wandering off to seek the silken expanse of his proper bed.

For once Victor was glad to have been left alone. He didn't think he had it in him to manage any more speech right now.

The fact that he had performed this ritual so many times came in handy; everything was muscle memory by now, requiring none of the higher brain function he didn't currently have. Mechanical action saw the blood cleaned from his skin, staunched at the wound-point, and wiped away as well from his tools, which were then placed carefully away in his kit and removed from Roman's table. He did not have clear memory of any of these things later on, but, as he always did before retreating to his room, he did make sure to flick off the lights.

He lit himself a smoke after sitting on the edge of his bed. There'd been a fleeting, vague sort of hope that it would steady him a little, but as Victor stared into the dark for untold minutes he barely remembered to breathe, let alone take any drags.

He knew that society would label him 'broken' in a myriad of different ways if he ever let any shrinks close enough, so he supposed that in the end it was only natural that he'd be broken romantically, too--no Mark to be found, and head over heels for somebody anyway.

What a fucking joke.

His throat scratchy in a way that had nothing to do with the cigarette, Victor tossed the stub on the floor and stomped it out before rolling over and pulling his pillow over his head. He was bleeding again, and his only solace was that this time the wound was in a place that nobody would be able to see.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for all the kind comments and kudos, the feedback for chapter one was so overwhelmingly positive and it means the world ;.;
> 
> This second part ended up being nearly twice as long as the first and I Am Not Sure How That Happened, all I know is that if everyone enjoys this even half as much as I did when I was putting it all together then I will be the happiest author

Irreverent of the fact that a part of Victor's world had been turned upside down, time continued its forward march. There were good days, and bad ones, and sometimes whole bad weeks. Weeks where the storm cloud around his boss would just keep _lingering_ and Victor would add a new tally each day with such regularity that he felt like a castaway carving on a tree every sunset to keep track of how long it had been since the ship had gone down. He'd heard tell of people in lockup doing the same thing, but had no personal frame of reference for it--he'd always been skilled enough to escape any convictions, and even more so now that he'd been plucked up by a patron he was in very little danger of ever actually landing in jail.

Plus, working for Roman could hardly be compared to prison.

He was in it for life, sure, but that was entirely by choice.

The only things ever on lockdown in Victor's existence were the occasional jolts that would manifest behind his ribcage whenever he was alone with his boss. They would occur most often during extreme polarities of Roman's emotional spectrum: an exhilarated flare-up whenever the man was riding a high, and an astonishingly strong surge of protectiveness whenever he was in a low. It was difficult work each time, having to stifle them; with each recurrence they seemed to spring from an even deeper place somewhere inside Victor than they had before.

They might merely have been further additions to the long list of things that Victor had murdered, save for two unique traits: not only could he never seem to finish them off...he never once enjoyed having to make the attempt.

Still, he kept at it. He couldn't afford to let anything take any further root than it already had.

Victor belonged to Roman. Roman had uttered such many times, and with many different inflections, and Victor had decided his allegiance long before either had ever spoken it in words. It was immutable.

But the fact remained that Roman more than likely had a Mark on him, somewhere. And even if he didn't, that still meant that Victor could never call him _his_.

So he worked on, as normally as possible, and day by day endured the regimen of making peace with that.

And if night by night he put himself through the misery of replaying the memories of certain of Roman's smiles--ones that seemed private, for Victor and Victor alone--only to remind himself at the end of it all that he was only seeing what he wanted to see...well. That he was a masochist was old news.

-

Victor had seen and felt the low coming, but it took even him by surprise when a Friday night rolled around and Roman showed no indication of making any kind of move to head downstairs. He wouldn't always make appearances in the club during the week, especially if otherwise occupied with business, but for him to skip out on schmoozing on a weekend was nigh unheard-of. The listlessness and sullen attitude were things Victor had seen before, and when they hadn't dissipated by five p.m. he'd customarily sent out a mass text for everyone to leave the upstairs the hell alone, but when his watch showed _seven_ and Roman hadn't even changed out of his lounging robes...

He mentally ticked through things he could do. Roman occasionally just required a little prompting--suggestions couched in questions that would inspire him into action--but Victor could tell that wouldn't be the right course tonight. Just because it was routine didn't mean he _had_ to try to get his boss downstairs. Roman hadn't moved from his current position of staring out the window for twenty solid minutes, so routine obviously wasn't what he was after tonight...if he was even consciously after anything at all.

Yeah, Victor thought. Routine could go fuck itself.

Roman had hardly acknowledged him throughout the day, but he hadn't either indicated that he wanted Victor to leave, and so he had hitherto spent much of his time simply standing at various places around the loft, shifting position when Roman did so that even when the man didn't directly have Victor in his field of vision he would always (hopefully) know that he was there. Not a lot had changed over the course of the last few hours, though, and he wanted to help in a more active way if he could.

Victor eventually made his way over to the bar. Roman's emotional swings were always more pronounced when he had an emptier stomach. He'd had a breakfast a long while back--if one could count semi-venomously stabbing things with his fork and only eating half of the portion before waving that it all be cleared away as a meal--but hadn't ingested anything since then. Booze definitely wouldn't be a cure-all, but he wasn't about to call down to the kitchens and from his point of view it was at least somewhat better than the whole lot of nothing that Roman's system was working with now.

Roman actually glanced at him when Victor touched his elbow, which was a good sign. "Made something for you, boss," he murmured, and offered him the drink.

The response was delayed, but Roman did end up taking the glass. That made his actual swallowing it down appear lightning-quick in comparison; he'd hardly accepted it into his fingers before he was tipping it back, throat working once, twice, and emitting an exhale when all that was left was the ice. "Needed that," he said a little hoarsely.

"I thought you might." Victor watched him. Roman had turned, trudging to his dining table and depositing himself into its head chair. "Can I do anything else?"

Roman made a noncommittal noise. He'd taken to swirling the ice around, his eyes tracking its circling for a little while, but seemed to grow bored and set the glass on the table before sliding it away from himself and slumping forward with his head in his hands.

No coaster, Victor noted. The talking was a positive step but that meant that he was still in a bad way. After making sure the sweating glass was at least on a placemat he drew close to Roman again and ventured to place a palm on one of his shoulders. "...you're tense." His thumb slid unconsciously back and forth across the silken sleeve. "Let me take care of you?"

Initially Victor couldn't even tell if Roman had even heard him, much less if he was actually thinking about it, but eventually he gave a monosyllabic sound that was just enough on the positive side of indifferent that Victor took it as permission. He placed both hands on him and slowly began working at his muscles in the way he'd learned was most effective. No one would have mistaken him for a professional but he'd at least picked up enough of what Roman seemed to like that he knew he had a decent enough chance at grounding him.

Over time the touches appeared to have their intended effect. Roman very gradually melted into them, even going so far as to lean forward onto the table and rest his head onto his arms with a garbled sigh. There were several minutes that could have been called peaceful.

Victor was just on the point of hoping he could take this as a sign that the evening might start going better for Roman when the man let out another exhale--this one sharp, indicative of something very different than relaxation. Victor's hands stilled on him when he realized an appropriate adjective for its pitch had been _pained_. "...Boss?"

Roman began clenching up again, his frame going first stiff, and then outright shaky. His hands worked themselves into fists and he spoke something into his arms, some type of comment that was muffled but that sounded biting.

Victor got the distinct impression that it would be best to remove his hands from him. "I didn't hear--"

"I told you to _fuck off_ , Zsasz." Roman lifted his head up and all the fire of one of his outbursts was in his features, blazing white-hot, and his voice raised to a shout. "Just fuck off, alright?!"

It took him a half-second longer than normal to respond to the command; it was the only one that Roman had ever given him that he hadn't wanted to obey. Trying to ignore how his chest had gone tight he folded his hands behind his back and ducked his head, keeping his steps quiet as he rounded the table and headed to leave.

"Wait."

The croaked directive stopped Victor in his tracks. He looked around to find Roman staring after him with a completely different expression than his one of seconds before.

" _Wait_ ," he said again--almost _asked_. He was holding a hand out over the table towards him, and he looked stricken. "I didn't mean it, Victor, I--I didn't. Come back."

Roman was never a man to say please, but in that moment Victor saw the word clearly in his eyes. In no time at all he was back in front of the table, facing him. "I'm here, boss," he told him quietly--promised him.

Roman wasn't given towards saying thank you, either, but the gratitude seeped from him in the relieved slump of his shoulders, and Victor had to swallow past an odd clench in his throat.

"What else can I do for you?" he asked after a minute's silence.

At the question, Roman swallowed in turn. "...I just need you not to walk away from me. Don't ever walk away from me."

If the command earlier had been the hardest one he'd ever had to hear, this one was the easiest. "Never," Victor murmured back, and in that answer he meant not just in these moments but all the ones to come.

Roman was now giving him a look that Victor couldn't identify. He stared at him until his eyes had nearly glazed over, until all at once he blinked and moved his gaze to the table, running his hands through his hair. In amongst this was a mumble that Victor almost didn't catch: "I'm so tired..."

He got up, heading in the direction of his room, and Victor chose to interpret not walking away as not leaving him alone in a time of distress, either. He followed him, for both his boss' sake and his own, unable to quash the selfish need to be the one to make sure he was all right.

Roman climbed atop his king-size mattress and nestled into its center atop the covers, lying on his side and both hugging and resting his head on one of the long pillows. Watching him from where he stood at the bedside Victor had the thought that his not bothering using the blanket probably had less to do with lethargy and more with sensory overload; he wasn't familiar with all the technical ways to describe it but he was aware that Roman could only handle so much, and at a breaking point like this the texture of the robe was likely about all he could take right now.

It was not the first time he had been into Roman's bedroom--occasionally Victor would trail behind him in business discussions whilst Roman took care of his morning routines--but the context of those visits was so incalculably different from their circumstances now that he could not help but bite his lip when the silence began to stretch. "I can go now, if you want," he offered quietly; both seeking reassurance that he wasn't doing something wrong, and giving Roman an out to dismiss his technically unasked-for presence if he was.

Roman stared into the fabric of his pillow for some time. Very eventually he gave a reply, in a tone so soft it was nearly inaudible: "You don't have to."

That decided him in favor of staying. In a move that he didn't consider the potential ramifications of until after he'd already done it, Victor sat on the edge of the mattress with his back leaning against the headboard.

He had a practical reason for the decision--he'd already been standing for the entire day, and there was no other available seating in the immediate vicinity--but anything else Roman could have possibly read into it had escaped him until he noticed the man's hand clenching at the sheets in response to the very obvious change in weight distribution on his bed.

However, to Victor's relief (and clandestine delight), Roman didn't do anything past that. Right up until his breathing changed, signaling that he'd finally slipped into sleep, he never gave any indication whatsoever that he wanted Victor to move.

Hours passed. Victor himself did not sleep--he and unconsciousness had a contentious relationship at best--but rather bided his time staring at the opposite wall. Any other venue and he would have begun to grow twitchy, but he noticed the steady rhythm of his boss' breathing was helping to keep back the static that would crowd in on his headspace during stretches of forced idleness.

He glanced at Roman again. Hitherto Victor's thoughts had been drifting, but they truly wandered now as he slipped into an indulgence, gazing at the man in a way he could never allow himself to while the other was awake. Eventually that hurt too much for even him, though, and with a sigh he fixed his eyes back onto the wall.

He was Victor fucking Zsasz, and here he was _pining_ \--and for his boss, no less. The entirety of Gotham would rip him to shreds for it if they ever figured that out, and that very same boss would probably shove everybody else out of the way so he could be first in line.

Roman was more than familiar with the fact that Victor had been born without a Mark. The crime lord made it a practice to vet all of his employees for potential weaknesses, and in the world they lived in that made keeping track of soulmates a necessity; you had to know if someone had a bond that could ever tempt them to turn or squeal. Roman's eyebrows had near hit his hairline when Victor had reported his lack of one and backed it up with a strip search.

_"No shit?" Roman said in some amount of bewilderment, echoing their first meeting and circling him, giving his body multiple up-and-downs._

_"No shit," he confirmed with a shrug, and Roman had laughed, and clapped him on the shoulder, and that had been that._

Victor let out another exhale at the memory, recalling how blithe he'd been about the matter then as compared to how he felt about it now.

He registered at some point that Roman's breathing was different. When he looked over it was to find the man awake--for how long he had been so, Victor couldn't tell--and staring at him. They were both wordless for some time, and for the second time that day Victor could not quite pin down the look in the other man's eyes.

Roman spoke first. "You stayed," he said, in a way that was almost like a question.

Victor could only reply with a nod, for some reason unable to get his throat to work.

Roman kept on giving him that same look until he rolled over in a fluid motion, his expression no longer visible. In a voice that was much closer to his regular authoritative tone he ordered Victor to go make him a coffee. "I need an espresso."

"Right away, boss."

-

A nasty rainstorm may have been hammering at the windows, but in the dim and warm lighting of the loft Victor was in a rare state of utter serenity. He not only had three cuts to make this evening, which already made it a good day, but the number happened to coincide with the last tallies he needed to complete the design he'd been working at on and off over the last eight months. It wasn't commonplace for him to sing but he did catch himself humming under his breath as he laid out his knives.

His peripheral awareness told him that Roman had reemerged from his sleeping quarters, but as soon as Victor affirmed with a glance in the mirror that the man wasn't approaching him or otherwise seeking his attention, he paid him about as much further mind as Roman appeared to be paying him. From Victor's perspective it didn't come off as either of them ignoring the other--just that they had reached the type of equilibrium in their cohabitation that verbal acknowledgment wasn't always necessary between them. And as he was a man who preferred to keep quiet most of the time anyhow, it was simply... _nice_.

The whole _situation_ was nice. Roman had recovered from his slump of two days prior, and aside from the business Victor had stepped out to see to much earlier in the afternoon--which had in itself been enjoyable--this was as much the epitome of a lazy Sunday as he'd ever experienced.

Since he already knew where he'd be placing his new scars he didn't stand on his usual ceremony of giving his reflection a once-over after exposing his chest. About the only trouble he did take in regards to baring himself was making sure his shirt was hung over the back of the nearest chair. If he'd been alone he wouldn't have bothered but with his boss in the background--mixing himself a cocktail, from the sound of it--it was best to keep the area tidy.

With that aspect taken care of he turned to the real meat of things. The familiar fizzle of anticipation set all his nerve endings alight as he reached for the blade he'd chosen for the night's work. His tally was going to be right again, and the peculiar compulsion towards that design would finally be swept away, rectified, done.

The first incision. Sharp, like the satisfaction that followed it. Lilting tones winding into the milieu--his boss, humming now too.

The second. Searing, like his sense of pride. Approaching footsteps, slow and rhythmic as the beat of an untroubled heart.

Third. Molten, like the rush of endorphins that hazed over his thoughts and vision. Roman standing behind him, pajama-clad and drink in hand, making eye contact with him in the mirror.

Victor blinked.

"Satiating that quirk of yours, I see." His boss was close enough that the vibrations from the purr in the man's throat were almost palpable. "Well go on--finish up. I want my private showing."

Victor very nearly could not comply with the order--the feeling had fled from from his fingers. He typically didn't remain this charged after he completed his cuts, nor this heated, but Roman's proximity was lending a wholly different atmosphere than was usual for his ritual, especially with his choice of phrasing.

 _Private showing._ Like Victor was a piece in a gallery.

He knew very well that he was no work of art, aesthetically speaking, but what mattered was the implication that Roman was well aware that he was just about the only person on earth that Victor would let see him mid-tally, let alone present himself to for an inspection after. What mattered, the thing that kept his extremities numb and put a shudder down his spine as he turned away to staunch his bleeding, was that every indication pointed to Roman reveling in owning him as much as Victor reveled in being owned by him.

In his situation, he thought that was about as much as he could have ever hoped for.

When he turned back to him he could have sworn an apt term for the look in Roman's eyes was hungry, which only served to fling more sparks onto the already-smoldering kindling in Victor's gut. _Yes,_ he wanted to tell him, _feast your eyes--it's all for you._

He was half-thinking of another type of feasting, too--had lately begun entertaining an array of carnal thoughts in late-night hours and wanting to actualize them more and more--but valiantly crushed the scraps of those fantasies beneath his heel as he folded his hands behind his back. He couldn't afford to indulge in any of that now. Not right in front of the man, when a physical reaction might any moment give him away. Fuck, it was going to be all he could do to hold himself together just from him _observing_ him.

Victor was so focused on keeping himself from flushing like a goddamn teenager that it took him a minute to register that the look on his boss' face had changed. The blue eyes were fixed on his new marks, to be sure, but not only did the stare seem much wider than the situation called for, the color appeared to be draining from Roman's features.

Then the glass he was holding slipped from his fingers and shattered on the floor.

Victor barely had time to start at the sound before Roman was wheeling away. He stood frozen for an endless moment, his hands gnarled into his hair, and then all at once staggered off in the direction of his room.

Victor might not have followed. Almost didn't--but Roman made a noise just before he was out of sight, something strangled that sounded distressingly close to a sob, and then Victor's legs couldn't move fast enough.

He found him in the en suite bathroom. His arms were braced on the counter on either side of the sink, the water was running, and even from where he'd stopped in the doorway Victor could tell there was a tremor in his shoulders.

For the life of him he didn't yet know what had brought it on, but he had borne witness to enough of Roman's periodic episodes to know that he was in the midst of a fit. Frantically ratcheting through his options--Roman had hitherto never shown inclination to harm himself during such a time, but the possibility was always in the back of Victor's mind and it always made him go cold--he decided that the best course of action would be to try and determine if this was an instance in which Roman could or wanted to be verbal.

Much more softly than he would let anyone else ever hear, he called out to him. "Boss...?"

Roman's head snapped up. He stared at Victor in the reflection of the mirror, his complexion chalk white. "Stay right the fuck there or I swear to fuck I'll gut you."

"Of course." Victor remained stock-still, not so much fazed by the guttural threat as he was focused on analyzing it. There was rage, certainly...but something about it nagged at him, told him that the anger was not all there was--that he was missing something. He at least was able to pick out that Roman hadn't outright ordered him away. "Can I ask what's wrong?"

"As if you don't _fucking_ know!"

It wasn't the accusation that made Victor's eyes go wide, or the hysterics. He'd seen plenty of hysterics. What shocked him to his core was abruptly understanding the facet to the other man's expression that had escaped him before; why he'd had so much difficulty identifying it.

Until this moment he had never seen Roman _afraid_.

When it became clear that Victor's incomprehension wasn't letting him do much more than gape Roman bared his teeth in a snarl. Finally turning away from the sink he ripped his hand towel down from its hanger and began to scour himself. He then stalked toward Victor, stopping a scant yard away and raising up a fist for him to see. The scrubbing of the towel had chafed him but that wasn't the color that caught Victor's eye: a very different kind of red, kept hidden until now beneath concealer and gloves, blazed prominent on the man's skin.

Roman Sionis had a soulmate Mark on the back of his right hand.

A latticework of lines that exactly matched the pattern that Victor had just finished carving above his heart.

Victor had experienced literal kicks to the chest that hadn't winded him as much as that sight did. Roman, by contrast, was breathing like a wounded animal, and likewise seemed just as ready to lash out. His entire frame was shaking as he lowered both hands to his sides, the fists he made clenching and unclenching in spasms.

"So now are you going to tell me what the hell you're playing at?" Roman continued, his voice a pitch up from where it had been previously. "Where'd you get it from, huh? Some old photograph I missed? Or did you sneak some kind of look while I was sleeping? _Was that what the other night was about?_ Did you only stay so that you could filch some fucking freebie while I couldn't do anything about it?!"

And that was the crux of it. Even as he fought not to flinch in the face of the tirade Victor felt the tide of comprehension flow over him--this was less Roman talking than his paranoia using him as a mouthpiece; he could still find some way to defuse this, to help him claw out of the spiral.

After a moment's wild thought, he had it.

"You've been keeping that covered up for years, right?" he sought to affirm. "Not just with the gloves, but with the makeup?"

"Of course I have," Roman snapped. "It doesn't match any of my wardrobe, and even if I wasn't in the trade I'm in, my Mark is nobody's business but mine."

That was exactly what Victor needed to hear. "There's no way, then," he said emphatically, making sure to look Roman in the eye and even going so far as to reach out and touch his arms. Anything and everything he'd learned could pull the other man back to shore when the riptide was trying to drown him. "There's no way I could have ever found it, even if I'd been searching for it. For one, we both know what a light sleeper you are. You'd have woken up if I'd tried anything like that. And for two--" here he gave a bark of a laugh, his own earnestness overwhelming him "--you know full well that I don't know jack shit about cosmetics. I'd never have been able to reapply anything to where you couldn't tell I'd done it."

A way Victor had learned to identify how far gone Roman was to an episode was by his eyes. In the deepest pits of one their color would be lit up but also jarringly flat, overtaken by a dead shine. The blue now was softening down from that, a different sort of brightness--he dared say moisture-laden--starting to shimmer there. The accusation in his gaze was now starting to resemble something much closer to supplication. Roman wanted to believe him. And that was more than half the battle--that let Victor know he was getting through.

"I stayed with you the other night because I wanted to, Roman," he told him quietly. "You told me I could, and I wanted to. I would never betray your privacy."

Roman gave a vague gesture toward Victor's chest. "Then fucking _how_?" The words were cracked.

"I don't know. I barely even thought about the layout." Now that Roman was calmer his own personal disbelief was starting to set in, muddling his ability to make any clear assessments. He tried to think back. "The only thing I ever had on my mind when I was making these was--"

Victor's voice died. He'd had a realization; had connected dots that until now he hadn't even known existed.

"Was what?!" Roman's tone was creeping back to a blend of ire and panic, the latter aggravated by Victor's silence.

Even after swallowing he could only manage a whisper. "You."

Everything made sense now. His compulsion for the pattern had begun in the days leading up to the night of his revelation, the night he'd set his knife into his flesh without meaning to--an action he couldn't even refer to as a mistake anymore, because the line the laceration had left was the most prominent of them all. On his skin _and_ Roman's.

He and Roman Sionis matched. He felt dizzy.

Meanwhile, Roman's jaw had set. But rather than stepping back from him, as Victor expected he would, he instead stepped _into_ Victor's space. "Me."

That Roman was taller than him was a fact he was aware of, but never had it set his blood on fire quite as much as it did that moment. He had to wet his lips; they, and indeed his entire mouth, had gone dry. "If you hadn't hired me I'd still be killing. There's always another little bird waiting to be set free, and that means there's always another tally I'm going to make. They all blend together, sometimes...but never the ones that you order. I remember those. Especially--" He very briefly faltered, but then decided _fuck it_ , this conversation was happening so he might as well be honest-- "Especially the ones that made you happy."

Roman had retained unbroken eye contact with him throughout this. The air between them was charged, electric like the storm outside. "So really, what you're getting at," he said at length, the words less a growl than a velvet rumble, "the hypothesis you're handing me right now...is that you somehow knew how to draw your own Mark yourself? Without even knowing that's what you were doing?"

That Roman didn't appear averse to the idea made Victor's pulse hammer. "There's a way to check," he managed.

It was one of the world's oldest cliches: when you met a soulmate, it was supposed to cause you some kind of 'inner glow' to be nearby them. Novels and movies and celebrity couples spouted about the phenomenon all the time. The cultural fascination was unavoidable to a degree that even Victor, disinterested as he'd historically been, had been inundated with descriptions time and again despite not giving a single shit.

He gave one now. Standing shirtless in his boss' bathroom, said boss barely half a foot from him and searching Victor's face with a kind of cautious intrigue, Victor could admit that he did.

"I've never touched you before," Roman said, a note of something like wonder in the statement. Like he was realizing it for the first time.

Victor parted his lips to offer confusion--Roman had rested his arm around Victor's shoulders often enough, and Friday night wasn't the first time Victor had worked out the stress in Roman's shoulders in turn--but it died before he could speak it. In a way Roman was exactly right. All of those gestures had involved fabric: either Roman's shirt or Victor's, or Roman's gloves. In all their acquaintance there had never been any direct contact between their skin.

Roman started lifting an arm. Victor stopped breathing.

Overall it was very quiet. The angelic choir notes and other airy nonsense people talked about were bullshit, just as Victor had always suspected they were. But he did feel something--and not just the flare of want low in his gut. When the fingertips of the other man's Marked hand ghosted over his chest the old warmth behind his ribcage stirred, shuffling free of everything he had tried to keep it buried beneath. It spread, and spread, seeping into his bones, and at the moment Roman's palm (trembling, now) lay flat against his scars he may as well have been standing in a shaft of sunlight.

Roman turned away, repeatedly running his fingers through his hair. He then gave a sound as choked as it was abrupt and strode to the sink, bowing over it and splashing at his face with some of the still-running water. When he went to dry himself he had to fumble for his body towel; he'd dropped the hand one earlier after exposing his Mark.

The attempt at regaining composure, if that's what it had been, was a lost cause. By the time Roman had re-crossed the distance back to him Victor had seen a streak of moisture that had nothing to do with the faucet arc down one of his cheeks. "How long?"

He knew what he was asking. "Eight months," he replied thickly. "Since I realized, anyway. I couldn't tell you how long before that."

"God fucking damn it," Roman breathed. "We've wasted so much fucking time."

Victor was conscious of being crowded up against the wall, could feel the mouth covering his own, but it still took a few seconds for it to really _set in_ that he was being kissed; Roman in fact almost seemed about to pull back from his apparent unresponsiveness when it finally registered. Growling he wrenched the other man back in, fingers snarling into the brown hair, and Roman's lips parted with a truly exquisite noise. There was a long window afterward where neither of them breathed anything but each other's air.

As their initial frenzy died down, Roman did as he did in most other areas of his life and started talking again. "Everybody always sells that this is supposed to be made simpler from Marks," he sighed petulantly against Victor's jaw, nosing down to his neck. "S'bullshit that we got jerked around so long."

Victor agreed, but had trouble saying so for a minute because of the way Roman was mouthing at the three parallel scars above his pulse-point. The only reason that he could still stand was that the other had him pinned. "Absolute bullshit, boss."

"Mmn. If there was an office for this shit I'd go and burn the place down. I mean _fuck_ \--" One of Roman's hands was at the back of Victor's head, and its nails bit into his scalp while his other slammed against the wall in an open-palmed strike. "What kind of fucking right does anything have to put me through the wringer of thinking there was someone else to wait for when who I wanted was right fucking here?"

That sentence meant more to Victor than any other he'd heard in his life. Blinking rapidly, he gave a smile and in his giddiness chanced a quip. "Maybe whatever decides those things just took into account how much you love theatrics."

The look Roman threw him was sharp, something approving and fiery leaping into the blue. "Take me to bed. And you'd better see to it that I can barely get up off of the mattress come morning."

Until that ragged order Victor had never shivered from heat before.


End file.
